You're My Crutch When My Legs Stop Moving
by Penningpastiche
Summary: After leaving the Rings of Akhaten the Doctor ends up telling Clara about his involvement in the March 5th, 2005 Auton attack (and that sounds darker and sadder than I meant it to). One-shot. Title comes from the Phillip Phillips song "Gone, Gone Gone," partly because it fits Whoffle like a glove and partly because I couldn't think of a title. My first Whoffle fic.


**Set during the ending of S7x08, The Rings Of Akhaten. I stretched the ending out a little bit to fit this in after they leave Akhaten and before she leaves the TARDIS back on Earth. I wanted to write a scene where the Doctor tells Clara that he was there during the Auton attack in 2005, because I figured it was a conversation they would have. **

The TARDIS's hum changes in pitch as the Doctor flips a couple of levers and pushes a button, a soft shush echoing through the room.

"Doctor, are you all right?" Clara asks, pushing away from where she'd been leaning against the railing, and edges around the console towards him.

He looks up sharply, like she'd startled him, and then back down again. "What? Yes, I'm fine."

"You don't look fine." She crosses her arms.

For a moment the only noises are the TARDIS's noises, the humming and clicking and beeping. Clara looks up and watches the wheels above her head, which were slowly spinning in a way that was almost lazy.

"I was there, you know."

"Pardon me?"

He rests his hands against the console and stares down at them blankly. "I was there. March the fifth, 2005. The Auton attack. I was there."

She stills. "What? You…you were? You. You were there the night my mum was killed?" Her voice cracks ever so slightly on the final word.

The skin around his eyes softens as he moves to stand in front of her. "Yes. Well, sort of. It…wasn't me, precisely."

"You just said it was!"

"I know, I know, but… I said I was an alien." She nods. His hands gesture wildly for a moment as his brain formulates what to say next. "Well, my particular species of aliens have this way of cheating death, I suppose, a way to heal ourselves if we're mortally wounded. S'called regeneration. The trick with it is, though, is that I essentially change. I get a new body, new personality, new…" he waves his hands around, trying to come up with the appropriate words, "everything." He pauses in his gesticulating, trying to judge her reaction. Her face doesn't reveal much, she's just staring up at him though her eyes have gotten wider. "Like I said, alien. When the Autons attacked I was in my ninth body, so yes, it was me there but I was not the same man I am now." Not even remotely…although his behavior after he lost Amy and Rory reminds him in hindsight way too much of how he had been after the war.

She starts playing with her necklace. "What body are you on now?" She's speaking to his bowtie, seeming unable to look him in the face.

"My eleventh."

Her eyes flick up to his, and they're really wide. Sad. A deep, dark brown that makes his hearts twinge when another pair, so similar to the ones in front of him, flit through his mind. "So…you were involved in the Auton attack?"

"In a way. I ended up on Earth while tracking down the Nestene Consciousness, which was the being behind the attack. Took me a couple of days, but we ended up stopping it, quite dramatically—though not before it had started transmitting. That's what brought all those shop dummies to life and what… killed your mum."

"Wait, _we?"_

Had he said we? Uh. He mentally backpedals. "Um, yes, we…The first day I was there, I blew up a department store in an attempt to stop the Nestene, though it obviously didn't work."

"_Heinricks?_ You're the one who blew up _Heinricks?_ I remember that! That was _you?"_

"Um, yes." Her eyes are incredulous. "Told you, I was there. Anyway, while there I ran into a girl who worked there, and she happened to accidentally get caught up in the Autons trying to capture _me._ I ended up running into her the next day and she helped me defeat the Nestene. Traveled with me for a while, actually." He added the last line as a bit of an afterthought, then bit his lip when he realized what he'd said. It was never easy when someone learned that they were not the first to have traveled with him.

"Hm. So you stopped the attack…but not before my mum was killed…" she didn't say it accusingly, more as a statement. It still hit him like a punch to the gut.

"Yes, yes I did. Well more specifically Rose did. She…I, um, got pinned down by two dummies, and she quite literally swooped in and saved the day."

Clara's eyes become playful. "Rose, hmm? Yet another person you crooked your finger at and she joined you in your snogbox."

"Oi! I've told you, it's not like that!"

"I'm kidding, bowtie boy." He watches her pause, her eyes focusing on a blinking light on the console in front of her. "Could you take me there? To the shopping center where the attack was centered?"

He regretfully shakes his head. "No, I can't. Not only would there be two sets of me there, there would be two sets of you there. Even if you weren't in the shopping center at the time, younger you would still be in the city, and that makes a paradox. A weak point in time. If that happens, dangerous things can occur." He remembers another paradox, another desperate attempt to see a dead parent. Another adventure with Rose.

He looks at Clara, standing there, the evidence of what she had gone through so clear on her face. She never ceased to amaze him, this little, petite, so fragile human woman. Every version he had met always surprised him in some way. So different and yet so much the same from the woman in front of him.

The TARDIS makes a soft whooshing sound, and then the sounds of materialization begin echoing throughout the room. The Doctor's heart twinged. Time to say goodbye to Clara yet again, at least for a little while.

"Home again, home again," he sings as he flips a couple of levers, the TARDIS settling down in front of the house. "Jiggity jig…"

**Fin.**


End file.
